R25 (London)

Issue 755 of Rail Magazine (20 August 2014) reported that Boris Johnson, the then Mayor of London had started consulting on a new Zone 3 orbital railway, the 'R25'. The nickname alludes to London's M25 orbital motorway. The idea featured in news media when the Mayor visited Barking Riverside, a large development held up by lack of rail access. The idea of extending the Gospel Oak to Barking Line trains onto the Tilbury Loop line to serve a station near Barking Riverside had already gained some ground having been mentioned in the 2013 budget statement, but news reports showed a tube map-like extract with a new line crossing the River Thames to serve Abbey Wood.[1] Recently, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has proposed that an extension to Abbey Wood should be built as a later extension to the Barking Riverside Extension project. There have also been calls to extend the line further south across the river to Thamesmead and Abbey Wood.[2][3] In August 2017, the Government granted permission for the extension of the Gospel Oak to Barking Line and a provision for a stop at Renwick Road (if needed) and states that a further extension across the Thames should be provisioned.[4][5] City Metric have produced a map of what the R25 might look like in detail